Persona 5 Royal is a living masterclass and how to take an already amazing game and amp it up to the next level. It's not just a standard game of the year edition with some extra content thrown in on the side.
Just about everything in Atlas’s 2016 JRPG Magnum Opus has been honed, polished and expanded in some meaningful and positive way.
Across more than 130 hours of adventuring through urban Tokyo and the surreal realms of the human mind, the amount of love and attention to detail hiding around each old and new twist in the story left me in awe.
If you're not familiar with Persona 5, you should absolutely check out my original review of it because I'm going to mostly focus on what makes Royal even better.
There's a lot of ground to cover. So having played through the original version of Persona 5 twice, the most immediately noticeable and impactful of Royal’s changes come in the realm of combat.
It's hard to keep old-school four-person turn-based battles interesting in this day and age but nobody in the business does it better than Atlas.
In addition to some spot-on rebalancing of abilities and enemies across the board the role guns play in your arsenal has been totally reimagined.
Bullets refresh after each battle instead of only at the beginning of an infiltration. With the trade-off of being able to hold less ammo overall.
This feels almost game breakingly powerful in earlier areas but as time goes on, it allows them to settle in as a much more versatile and dependable tool, rather than something you just hoard for really tough enemies.
Showtime attacks are another excellent addition in which two members of your party team up for a devastating tag-team super finisher.
The animations are deliciously clever and over the top and they stylishly highlight your party members personalities.
I'll never get tired of watching Makoto and Haru double elbow drop a harbinger of the Apocalypse and a flashy hilarious nod to Pro Wrestling.
Show times trigger randomly but are more likely to happen when your party is in big trouble or when you're just about to finish off an enemy.
That adds an extra layer of drama and unpredictability to especially intense battles at just the right moments.
The fantastic story has been majorly expanded with a third semester featuring one new palace, a new area in the mementos mega dungeon and a new heart to steal.
It's a bit longer overall in the previous palace story arcs but not by a lot and there's not a whole lot of it I can talk about without risking major spoilers but I can say that it pits our team of phantom thieves against a really fascinating new antagonist with very, very different goals and motives from anyone they've faced before.
Personas deep thematic exploration of human society and the perils of the psyche continues to ask challenging and relevant questions about justice and suffering, that left me rethinking my own convictions and it's when a game isn't afraid to go those places that it really becomes a higher work of art.
The third semester is only one part of the expanded story though. the main campaign has also been significantly beefed up with two new confidants joining the already rich cast; bubbly aspiring gymnast, Kasumi Yoshizawa and calming but dorky school counselor, Takuto Maruki.
Each has a dauntingly deep tragic backstory filled with its own impactful twists and turns that were both painful and compelling to uncover and one of the returning confidants from the original Persona 5 has had their role in the story significantly tweaked and expanded but I won't spoil who.
Aside from the new area the whole of momentos has been brilliantly fleshed out with new collectibles and unlockables courtesy of the mysterious Jose.
He can sell you powerful items in exchange for flowers that spawn in the depths and unlock perks like increased experience points once you find enough hidden star stamps.
Mementos often felt like a slog in the original version of Persona 5.
It was definitely my least favorite part of the adventure the fact that Atlas has made it feel so much more alive adding new rewards for exploration and a healthy dose of personality, is a massive improvement by itself considering how much time you spend down there.
They've also implemented a mercy kill rule where you can run straight over monsters that are several levels below you instead of having to fight out a foregone conclusion but you still get experience money and item drops.
The amount this cuts down on the feeling of endless grinding is nothing less than a godsend and it allowed me to spend much more of the 130 hours of this playthrough doing interesting and engaging things instead.
I could practically fill an entire documentary with the long list of other small and medium-sized improvements found in Persona 5 Royal but here are a few of my favorites.
The Thieves Den is a new hangout area that will follow you across multiple playthroughs.
Here you can decorate with statues of personas you've unlocked, listen to the absolutely superb new and returning music tracks and re-watch any cutscene.
Incredibly, every single level of every single social link has been expanded with new dialogue so there's always something new to see even in familiar scenes. There's an entirely new free roaming district of Tokyo to explore.
Kichijoji, which includes a Jazz nightclub and the ability to level up your party members powerful baton pass ability with a new skill based darts minigame.
All of the classic palaces have been expanded with new hidden areas and new collectables to find.
Every major boss fight has been rebalanced and had new fun and challenging mechanics added. It's almost daunting how much extra cool stuff Atlas was able to pack in here. Put together it's probably at least a full extra games worth of content.
Persona 5 was already a strong frontrunner for being the best JRPG ever made and Royal really gets me wondering what else could even compete.
The excellent story and it's lovable multi-dimensional characters along with the challenging tactical combat are all refined and backed for another round with new surprises and new friends in tow there are new areas to explore and new twists to leave your jaw on the floor.
Very little has been left untouched and just about everything that has been touched is better off for it. The Phantom Thieves have stolen my heart all over again and I don't really want it.
